UVA Group is Working Towards Ending Wrongful Convictions in Virginia

Experts believe that about 4% of people in prison or jail didn’t actually commit the crime for which they were convicted. In Virginia state prisons alone, that means more than a thousand people shouldn’t be there. Sandy Hausman looks at why wrongful conviction happens, and why a literary celebrity is lending his name to the fight for reform.

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Sandy Hausman reports.

That’s the sound of freedom ending -- the start of a life lived on prison time, eating whatever low cost food is offered, sleeping and waking in a small confined space usually shared with others. It’s a grim prospect, especially for those who were convicted of crimes they did not commit.

“They didn’t have no evidence, no fingerprints, no video, so I thought they would never convict me of anything.”

That’s Joaquin Rodriguez – sentenced to more than a hundred years for a series of armed robberies he insists were committed by someone else. He was a teenager back in 1992 – newly arrived from El Salvador.

“They took me to a line-up, and I was the only person that fit the description that the victims gave to police and investigators.”

He was also the only Hispanic kid in the line-up, and witness error is the single biggest cause of wrongful conviction. At UVA’s Innocence Project, Legal Director Jennifer Givens lists other reasons why innocent people go to jail.

“There is bad science – junk science – that is used against individuals that is not reliable. There are false confessions, coerced confessions. There is bad police work, prosecutorial misconduct.

Sometimes, Enright adds, innocent people are convicted because they’re poor and can’t afford a lawyer with time and resources to mount a solid defense.

“Virginia is one of the lowest paying court appointments for criminal cases, and what we’ve learned is investigation is our primary cost. It’s what you spend the most time and money on, and because those lawyers that get paid the least have the least incentive to investigate, the communities that rely on court-appointed lawyers are going to be the ones that get hurt.”

Deirdre Enright at UVA's Innocence Project says that innocent people within Virginia's jails and prisons have little hope of escaping punishment. Her group is working to change that.

Credit University of Virginia School of Law

And Givens argues the law in Virginia works against defendants who are not allowed to see what evidence the prosecution has.

“Before someone goes to trial and has to make decisions about a bench trial, a jury trial, whether to plead, they don’t know what information is available to the prosecution. If defendants were granted more significant and generous discovery during that process, you could probably eliminate a lot of these problems.”

People can, of course appeal, but if that effort fails, Enright says there is little hope that an innocent person will escape punishment.

“No one looks at any of these convictions except for us and the people at the Capital Resource Center, and every time we scour these cases, we find things that no only would have resulted in acquittal, there probably wouldn’t have been a trial.”

The Innocence Project at UVA has more than 600 requests for help, but it can handle no more than a dozen cases a year.

“Undoing a wrongful conviction is far more labor intensive and far more legal research intensive than doing it in the first place.”

That’s why Enright, Givens and Shanthi Rajagopalan have organized a fundraiser at the law school, Wednesday evening from 5:30 to 8:30, hosted by one of the nation’s leading writers of legal fiction.

"Our panel is going to be hosted by the best-selling author John Grisham and it’s going to be moderated by Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick, and it’s also going to include five exonerees – Robert Davis from Albemarle County, Thomas Hainsworth from Richmond, Michael Hash and Eric Weekly from Culpeper,and Beverly Monroe from Powhatan.”

Admission is actually free, but organizers hope those who attend will be moved to donate at least $10 to their cause.

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